Harwich

Artist: Anna Lucas
Location: Harwich, Essex & Jamestown, Virginia

Essex County Council Arts Development in partnership with Commissions East have appointed artist Anna Lucas to work on the development of a visual art project which celebrates the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, Virginia by settlers who departed from Harwich. Aiming to provide historic insignt into the life of the early settlers and the native Americans, the project investigates issues such as trade, migration and settlement, and identifies ongoing links between the two countries.

Using the iconic figure of Pocahontas as a protagonist for discovering contemporary realities, Anna Lucas will create a film by re-working a collection of accounts from people in Essex, UK and around Jamestown and Virgina USA. These verbal accounts will be juxtaposed with images of estuary landscape and everyday life on the waterways of Essex and Cheapeake Bay in Virginia. A programme of public involvement has aslo been planned to run alongside and in response to the commission.

Anna Lucas makes work that develops observation of social networks and group dynamics in response to specific georaphical and architectural locations. Primarily know for her film and video work, she is interested in the act of making and viewing film as a means of generating a simultaneous detachment from and engagement with eveyday life, creatin contemplative work that inhabits the hybrid space between documentary and fiction.

The film will be shown in venues in Essex and Virginia between May and June 2008 - details to be confirmed. The film will also be available as a dvd.